Trump Imposes 25% Steel & Aluminum Tariffs On “Friends and Foes Alike”, EU Threatens Countermeasures

President Donald Trump on Monday imposed a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminium imports into the United States with no exceptions or exemptions.Although the United States gets most of its steel from Canada, Brazil and Mexico, the tariffs are largely — albeit indirectly — aimed at China.“This is a big deal — making America rich again,” Trump said in announcing the tariffs, according to a pool report.America imports very little steel directly from China, by far the world’s largest producer of steel. Steel tariffs of 25% launched in Trump’s first administration and continued by former President Joe Biden resulted in American importers shifting to other sources.Yet Chinese steel does make its way into the United States secondhand. Some is purchased by foreign countries and reshipped to the US. And some of it is mislabeled and resold through various channels.The United States is not the manufacturing-focused economy it once was, but it still consumes tens of millions of tons of steel and aluminum a year. Steel is a key component of everything from consumer goods such as cars and appliances to large scale infrastructure projects, such as skyscrapers, oil rigs and pipelines, bridges and roads. Aluminum also is a key components of such goods as cans of food and beverages, cars and commercial jets, as well as key infrastructure such as high power electrical lines.Tariffs could increase the cost of production of many if not all of those items because of the increased cost of the imported and domestic steel – and aluminum makers could raise the price of their products because of the reduced competition from low-priced imports.The weight and cost of shipping steel and aluminum have always given domestic producers something of an edge on import sources. American steel mills produce about three times as much steel as is imported here. n18oc_world n18oc_crux